Study inMatthew’s

Gospel

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Sermon On The Mount

The Lord’s Prayer [2]

Chap 6v5-15

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IntroductionThe opening petitions that we have examined already under the headings of; the worship of the Father and the kingdom of the Father have as their primary focus the glory of God. The concluding petitions that can be examined under the headings; the provision of the Father, the grace of the Father and the protection of the Father, have as their primary focus the need of man.

God and his kingdom takes priority over man and his need but this does not mean that putting God first will impoverish the believer’s life. God is the one around whom our lives are intended to orbit and by putting him first our lives are enriched and enlarged.

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Provision Of The FatherPraying for our daily bread seems a mundane petition after our emphasis upon the glory of God. For this reason some have tried to spiritualise it, to raise it above the mundane and materialistic. But this is no trivial petition. It is intimately connected with the glory of the Father. For part of God’s glory is providing for both the needs of his creation and his redeemed children.

What were Jesus’ followers intended to understand by this petition? Is it a call to pray and then to look heavenward for loaves to parachute down from some heavenly bakery? No! but it is a recognition that God is the ultimate source of all we need to nourish our bodies.

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Provision Of The FatherAffluent western societies have lost something of the power of this petition and the consequent awareness of God as the One who upholds the universe by his word of power. Its is God who brings forth the seasons in their time, seed time and harvest.

If God wanted to, he could withhold the rain, darken the sun and make the land barren. When the Christian prays this petition he is saying that he recognises that God is the author of all his material blessings.

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Provision Of The FatherThis is not to suggest that God cannot miraculously supply the material needs of his children. He used ravens to feed Elijah. George Muller began a children’s orphanage in Bristol in the UK. He taught the children to trust God for their daily needs - they had no funds of their own. One morning they gathered for breakfast. Muller gave thanks to God for providing their daily bread even though there was no food in the kitchen. Then there was a knock at the door. A baker whose van had broken down outside asked if they could make use of the freshly baked food since he would be unable to continue with the day’s deliveries. The orphans could not have had a more telling lesson on the provision of the Father.

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Provision Of The FatherThere are billions of people in the world, which is a tiny speck in the universe and yet God is concerned for our smallest needs. He does not say, “Do not bother me with your trivia I have bigger things on my mind”. We are encouraged to bring even our smallest concerns to him. This petition also restrains excessive desire on our part. It does not encourage us to pray extravagantly, ‘Lord I’m hungry a seven course meal in a five star hotel would be fine’, or ‘Lord I’m cold a fur coat would warm me up nicely.’ God ministers to our need not our greed. The term ‘daily bread’ refers to those things which are necessary for life. Jim Elliot’s prayed, ‘Lord let be lose the tension of the grasping hand.’

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Provision Of The FatherThis petition also involves us in the needs of others, hence not ‘give me’ but ‘give us’.

Someone has written satirically, ‘I was hungry and you formed a committee to investigate my hunger, I was homeless and you filed a report on my plight, I was sick and you held a seminar on the situation of the underprivileged. You have investigated all aspects of my plight but I am still hungry and homeless and sick.’

It is easy to be blind to or detached from the needs of others. Jesus’ prayer helps deliver us from our self-preoccupation. Our prayer life could be revolutionised by asking, ‘Are all of my petitions ‘give me’ petitions?

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Provision Of The FatherThis petition delivers God’s people from the neurosis of every age - the fear of survival. Grain shortages were not uncommon in the Roman Empire and panic regularly gripped the populace. Against that background Jesus taught his followers to commit the future to God. To live a day at a time and be concerned for one’s immediate daily needs and not paralysed by fears for the future. In the UK the cost to the Health Service for tranquillisers is approx. £150m per annum. People are anxious about their futures and through this petition Jesus reminds us that we are not at the mercy of circumstance. Our Father knows what we need and can be trusted to provide.

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The Grace Of The FatherWe have already noted that the Christian, conscious of his sin and failure can drag his feet in approaching God while the knowledge of a full pardon and restored relationship can turbo charge his entry into God’s presence. Jesus addresses the issue of sin in the next petition; ‘Forgive us our debts’.

Jesus knows that sin and the associated guilt cause dark storm clouds to obliterate the sunshine of God’s smile. And so we are encouraged to confess our sins. To bring them out into the open, for it is by exposing and forsaking them that we prepare the way to receive the grace of God's forgiveness.

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The Grace Of The FatherThe word Jesus uses to describe sin is ‘debt’. It is an accounting term for a failure to pay what is owed. The word reminds us that we owe God perfect obedience but we cannot balance the books of our lives nor are we able to erase our debt already. Human accountability before the judge of all the earth has been woven into the fabric of God’s moral universe. It is this that troubles conscience and stirs up guilt like a black spectre in the human heart. The head of large mental hospital in the UK said, ‘I could dismiss half my patients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness’. Shakespeare capture’s the tyranny of guilt and the psychological disturbance it can produce when McBeth having murdered Duncan finds peace of mind an unobtainable goal, he asks, ‘Can all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’

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The Grace Of The FatherAgainst this understanding of human debt God, in the gospel, extends to us the grace gift of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not a right that we can automatically assume will be ours. Heine the French free thinker died muttering, ‘God will forgive it is his trade’. He foolishly thought that forgiveness was a matter of pressing the right button and out pops forgiveness. Because God has shown himself to be forgiving we cannot presume that it will be automatically ours.

Forgiveness in scripture is not separated from repentance and faith. Only these hands can make God’s gift their own. Jesus provides a practical test for those who consider that they have received God’s grace gift of forgiveness.

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The Grace Of The FatherThe power of God’s forgiveness is seen in a person’s readiness to forgive others. cf.. v12, 14-15. Jesus is not teaching that we earn forgiveness by forgiving others but rather by forgiving others we indicate that we have experienced God’s forgiveness in our own lives. This is the thrust of the parable of the unforgiving servant cf. Matt. 18v21-35.

An unforgiving heart or even grudging forgiveness that says, ‘I’ll forgive but not forget’ reveals the absence of God’s forgiveness. If the words ‘as we have forgiven our debtors’ stick in our throats then we can have no confidence that the first part of this petition, ‘forgive us our debts’ has been heard.

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The Grace Of The FatherIn this petition Jesus is encouraging his followers to come to the Father and experience the sunshine of his love as the clouds that have overshadowed their enjoyment of fellowship with God are removed.

There is nothing more overwhelming that the realisation that we are forgiven men and women. Because Jesus has paid the price of our sin upon the cross, forgiveness becomes a present reality and the guilt of sin can no longer tyrannise our lives.

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The Protection Of The FatherThe final petition of the Lord’s Prayer anticipates that the children of God realising their weakness and vulnerability will seek the protection of God from evil. But what does the request not to be led ‘into temptation’ involve? The key to this petition is found in Matt. 4v1-11 which describes an intensity of spiritual conflict. Luke introduces his account of Jesus’ temptation in Lk. 4v1 with what we should understand to be Jesus’ own interpretation of what was happening to him. Notice ‘he was led by the Spirit’ into the desert, ‘to be tempted by the devil’.

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The Protection Of The FatherWhile the devil tempted Jesus, he had been led by the Spirit into that place of temptation. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Jesus is teaching us to pray that we will be protected from such and experience.

Bear in mind that the wilderness temptation was but a forerunner of an even greater test. Satan would return at a ‘more opportune time’, as the shadow of the cross fell over Jesus both on his way to Jerusalem to die Matt. 16v21-23 and as Jesus wrestled in Gethsemane. We will never plumb the depths of the awful onslaught of that temptation.

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The Protection Of The FatherClearly, we are to pray that we will be delivered first, from the evil one now, and secondly, that we might be kept from the test of his full onslaught upon our lives.

Concerning the latter, we are praying that we will either be protected from such testing, when the unholy trinity of ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’ conspire to shipwreck our lives or, when faced with such an onslaught that we will be protected in it by the gracious provision of God.

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The Protection Of The FatherWe progressively learn to deal with the flesh by God’s grace, and with the world and its attractions resisting the devil in the strength that Christ provides. However, the ultimate test confronts us when all three conspire together and we are faced at one and the same time by this unholy trinity.

Who can stand when indwelling sin is incited by the temptations of this world, and stirred up by devilish activity? This is the ‘evil day’ [Eph. 6v13] that Paul describes and for which we need ‘the whole armour of God’ [Eph. 6v11] if we are to remain on our feet, spiritually speaking, after the conflict.

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The Protection Of The FatherThis petition reminds us that we are enlisted in a spiritual war and not invited to a Sunday School picnic. The church is never in greater danger than when she is content to be either lead, plastic or chocolate soldiers. All melt in the heat of battle, having neither the desire or equipment to fight against the temptation to sin.

Oscar Wilde once famously said, ‘I can resist anything except temptation’. That reflects the world’s attitude but it should not be the view of Christ’s soldiers. There is a war on and we must be vigilant as we guard against enemy attack. Fruitful lives have been blighted because of a failure to take temptation seriously!

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The Protection Of The FatherSamson failed the vigilance test! We must not be intimidated or paralysed by Satan's wiles but we also need to guard against being blasé concerning their danger. Jesus urges us to pray to be delivered. The very fact that he does so is designed to assure us that our Father is both willing and able to deliver us.

Note the confident way in which Paul describes the protecting hand of God which operated in his life in 2 Tim. 4v18. ‘the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his kingdom for ever.’ Unlike Samson his confidence was not in his himself or his past performance but in the Lord himself!

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ConclusionWe have noted that in the second half of the Lord’s Prayer our attention has been turned from God’s glory to that of man’s need. We are encouraged to recognise God’s ability to meet man’s need; his need of provision, grace and protection, and that in turn brings us round in a full circle causing his people to glorify his name for his gracious intervention in their lives.

And while it is true that the words, ‘For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen’ are not found in the oldest manuscripts, what more fitting conclusion can there be than to magnify the God to whom we pray?